I went to That Certain Bridal Store, you know, the doomed one, pretty much the minute I got engaged.

Say Yes to the Dress was on our living room TV constantly at that time, and I was an ADHD addled, freshly sober motherfucker with a dead mom, a dying dad, a kid I’d just got back, and a history I was positive should already be old, to everyone who knew me before and judged me. Except – and this is important – except when it served me for them to remember. Remember how tortured I was, right?

Here’s a hot take for all you tortured babes out there:

Everyone. Is. Suffering. All. The Time.

It doesn’t mean you gotta live in it, though. I had a sponsor once who said “pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional.” This is great for someone with a few years clear-headed, but for the freshly sober, I prefer my first sponsor’s version: “You’re gonna suffer either way. You get to choose why, though. You gonna live in the suffering of sitting in your own shit? Or go through the suffering needed to change?”

I chose the second, after some careful consideration of both options.

The thing about addiction is, though, it resists. You might think it’s about the what, but it’s not. It’s about the who, or at least it is for me. I stopped drinking morning after my first meeting. I stopped abusing my medication when I went to rehab, a week later. Weed hung on around six months longer, but I cut that in the end, too. Unfortunately for my then-boyfriend, barely a minute before he proposed in an ihop parking lot.

Devoid of distraction and fresh into an un-addled brain for the first time in over a decade, I latched onto the idea of the wedding like a raft in an ocean of actual adult life-ing.

Specifically, the part I had full control over. Cuz that’s what we think we want, us addicts, alcoholics, insert-specific-substance addicts, potheads, flaming trashcans, whatever. We think we want control.

What I would wear? Totally within my control.

Unfortunately.

The first dress I purchased I bought after an appointment with my dad and sister. I tragically have exactly zero photos of this dress, but it was crepe and had the longest train I’d ever seen, a cowl neckline, and buttons all the way down the back. I bought it at the height of the plague, and the whole of my party backed up as I warned I was about to take off my mask.

I was wearing dark red lipstick. In the mirror, I looked like a fucking opera singer, but better, because of all that slink. All curves in ivory, the strike of red, and my dark hair feathered out from the buzz I’d done in month one clean. I re-masked so the consultant could approach with a veil – an enormously long (longer than the train!) number framed in soft lace, and I had never felt more glamorous, I had never felt more like good and beautiful things were coming, and I bought it in pieces, paying a bit every week for two months.

I went home and looked at the pictures until I couldn’t anymore, until I had found all the things one can find wrong, and then I deleted them all and went back to the Doomed Bridal Salon.

My second dress was a ball gown.

Not the one pictured above.

It was the sister of the first in that it was plain, but the waist was roughed in a way that created a smaller one, for me. I – the addict – had also found food in recovery, food to fill the clear brain, soak up that battery acid. My curves had gone from familiar to new, and my body felt odd and unnatural. Fatphobia left over from a time being thin turned inwards and attacked, and every dress I tried on, the goal was only that, only thin, how thin can I look.

A couple months later, and some new body pride. I’d started hitting the gym with the goal of feeling good rather than losing weight, toning rather than removing parts of myself through sweat and exhaustion. I succeeded in the first and a bit of the second, but more importantly, the first. I remembered the first dress, and feeling like an opera singer, and wanted to again.

I didn’t immediately jump back to the doomed salon. Instead, I scoured the internet – pinterest being a staple – and fixated in on a single dress that I no longer have any pictures of, a dress that hugged, that was simple, clean, except for stunning geometric cut-outs and a spark of odd beading that made the whole thing pop like a science fiction princess, or perhaps duchess. Maybe even witch.

Fuck yeah.

I hunted through the inventories of all the sample stores I could actually reach. Eventually, there it was, and I was there, and I tried it on, and it was perfect.

We were broke, though. So I took pictures, decided to come back ASAP, and looked at the pictures later until I hated them.

Go back to the doomed salon. What doesn’t make me look fat?

I barely remember that dress. I didn’t like it at all. Glitter, lace, rouged waist. Returned it, and–

Next, the black and white ballgown.

Pictured above.

It slapped. Let’s be real, it absolutely slapped. It was the only one that went away because we needed money.

We got that money. We used that money.

I started to get a little saner.

Went back to the Doomed Salon, got lace. Hated lace. Went back to the doomed salon; ended up trying on a bright red Vera Wang ballgown, discontinued, on sale for $200. Scooped that right the fuck up, despite not being sure I’d wear it. Fixed it myself. Got a job at the doomed salon fixing up other people’s dresses. Fixated on that for a while.

Sold the red dress for double what I’d paid.

Watched a lot of Bridal Sewing Techniques.

By this point, I didn’t have a dress at all, for the first time since our engagement. This actually did go on for almost a year. The addict – I – had re-focused, and my fixations became more about running, writing, movement in all small ways. The physical mirage was abandoned for physical feeling. I did yoga again and meditated. I did a fourth step, and then a fifth. Quickly, I moved down that line until I was sponsoring others. I went to meetings almost daily.

I wrote an original trilogy, the first of a duology, and a standalone that was finally good, like I remembered my writing being good. Also slapped out a 100k+ word fanfiction for an ancient web serial no one was reading anymore. Published that in a rush as I wrote it, barely editing, and people latched on. The author even hit me up after reading it, and more than one person drew fan art, and oh!

Oh right!

I love this.

I loved it. I love it. It’s everything: the writing, the reading, the writing again. The world unfurling under the keyboard, blooming over the screen and becoming real. Getting to create what I wanted to read, and then getting to read it. Beyond that, the perplexing wonder of others reading it. As if they have dipped into my mind and emerged excited, enraptured by what I had to say about what they loved.

The fan art. The love that made more art, and I made art in response. Call, response. Write, draw, write. The world had more in it.

Nothing had ever compared. I hadn’t finished jack shit in the years I’d spent drunk and high, and I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that this was it.

This will always be it.

A few months before our actual wedding, which we ended up having in our backyard, I went to the doomed salon with my stepmother and cousin. My stepmother made frequent “helpful” comments about what would make me “feel less fat.” My cousin cringed at the necklines.

I ended up with a bridesmaid’s dress in ivory. No train, no beading, no buttons. The same neckline as that first dress, but better. Crepe like that first dress, but loose. An A-line silhouette with a slit on the side, no beading or lace or any of that shit, and it cost under $150.

It was perfect.

Got that, got some beaded sleeve things that were supposed to go different, but I put them over the spaghetti strap, and it was unique, and mine. A belt that cost more than the dress, also with little pearls. Pearl earrings off Amazon that cost eight bucks. A headband of little pearls. A fan my sister supplied on the day that I hadn’t realized would complete the look, but did.

I carried my phone instead of flowers up to meet him in our backyard because I hadn’t memorized or printed my vows, which slapped, they were some of the best writing I’d ever done. He wore an outfit he’d assembled earlier that day, and his vows were done on the fly, too. He was him, though, so he’d been thinking on it all for a minute. Action just takes time for him.

Action takes a few immediate attempts for me.

Even in drafting, I start and restart. I reach a desperate point of self-hatred before a sentence catches! Then, I restart with that sentence in mind, and go until I reach halfway, sometimes a third, grudgingly. Knowing I need to make this thing if I want to read it, and I do want to read it. With everything in me at this point, I wish this book simply already existed. It’d be so much easier, then.

But around that halfway or third mark, I – the addict – ignite.

The final chunk of a book is a blissful blur. The previous reality of forcing myself to write, occasionally even being in the mood to write, vanishes. The awkward placement of writing is no longer a necessity. I can, and do, write anywhere. Everywhere. Anywhen and everywhen.

It needs to get out. It needs to happen. It needs to be.

I am a God of gay aliens or whatever, and I will shape their world.

I finish. I want to print it out and stand on top of it, like in Bird by Bird. I reread it, imagining that, and then cringe. Not finished yet.

I keep going. I keep going.

So the answer to the question is an odd duck, because my brain doesn’t accept the idea of doing less of anything, in the end.

I used to live in shame and regret. I used to live in the image of something better. All of that was bullshit, though. None of that was me, much as I wanted it to be.

I – the addict – am someone who does all of something.

I would like to be clear; not all of everything. In fact, let’s say very little of everything. Cleaning, for instance. Could do more of that.

But the thing I do, and there’s always at least one, I do all of it, and then I want more. This doesn’t have to be my downfall.

It does have to be creation, though. Or else it’s destruction.

Alternatively, I guess I could’ve just said “vaping.”

Should probably do less vaping, admittedly.